


All That's Left

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [51]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 3X09 (The Family of Blood), Angst, F/M, Tenth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Losing her destroyed him.  He doesn't know how to begin moving on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That's Left

He doesn’t know how to move on.

How can he? How does he begin to move on from what happened? He, the man with all the answers, doesn’t know if it’s even possible. He saw the woman he loved torn from him for ever, whilst being powerless to do anything about it, and what’s worse is that even though they’re parted for ever she’s still so very much alive.

He needs her. His senses ache for her, and his mind reaches for hers but always turns up short. And each reminder of his loss breaks him that little bit more.

Is there any coming back from that? He’d need a miracle to make that happen and that’s the last thing he’s going to get. It doesn’t work that way for him, it never has.

Even though she’s gone, she’s still the centre of his life. And, to an extent, that’s where the whole problem stems from: although he knows he must, for his sanity’s sake if nothing else, he doesn’t know how to live without her.

Nor does he know how he can even start to try.

He’s tried mourning her. Quite apart from the fact that it doesn’t feel _right_ , mourning somebody who is still very much alive, he’s found that once he’s started he can’t stop. And he adds his guilt about not being able to save her to the pain that surrounds his existence here without her, which does nothing except make his waking hours intolerable.

He survives, he _always_ survives, but in the process he loses everything.

And when the Daleks show up again – as part of him is starting to think they always will, so long as he lives and can be broken by them – it’s small wonder things get a little out of hand. Memories of the worst day of his life crash in on him and everything he’s been trying to hide away comes bubbling back to the surface. If he acts suicidal that day it’s because he is suicidal: Daleks remind him of Rose and of Gallifrey, these days in that order, and he cannot bear to be reminded of either.

He tries forgetting her, albeit the doing of it is unintentional – that episode with the Family in 1913 where he’d managed to subsume the essence of his very self had been, for him, a way out of things. A chance to leave her behind, and with her all the agony from the love-transformed-to-pain that’s attached to the torch he knows he’ll carry for her for ever.

It didn’t work, of course; how could it have done? When, despite everything, the sight and smell and sound of her had kept on bleeding through each of his senses, a canticle of love and grief and Rose, he'd begun to realise just how it never _could_ have worked. At the time, though, he'd thought he could stay as he was for ever. Part of him, unable to bear the idea of returning to constant reminders of an anguish he thought he’d left behind, cannot quite forgive the Family for forcing his hand.

And so she remains, burning through his blood and frozen in his memories. Just as she’s been since the day he lost her, and just how he thinks she'll always be. And through the scything pain the thought that something of her will always be with him is the light in the darkness he's been looking for; the tiniest spark of hope.


End file.
